What kind of people was he pursuing? Not very interesting in any way. "I came upon a new style of native dwelling, a low-roofed miserable hovel about twelve feet square; in the centre, a pit, about two and a half feet deep, was the sink and dumping ground for the refuse of the house. There we had to descend if we wanted the privilege of standing erect. That is where I placed myself to perform a baptism of the latest arrival of the family whom the mother held on her lap squatted on the higher ground which served as a bed. The habits of the natives cannot be described." "Our dogs were so exhausted," he says in the course of his narrative, "that they lay down at once without waiting to have their harness taken off. We fed them their ration of dry fish, they curled up in the snow and went to sleep. As for ourselves we tried to build a fire but could not succeed in boiling enough of melted snow for even a cup of tea; a box of sardines, the contents of which were so frozen that I had to chop them up with the prong of a fork constituted my royal supper. A hole was soon dug in the snow, by using the snow shoes for a shovel and a few sticks thrown in to prevent direct contact with the snow. I opened my bag of blankets, put on my fur parkey and tried to keep the blankets around me to keep from freezing. After a couple of hours I felt my limbs getting numb, and I was compelled to crawl out and look around for a hard mound of snow where I began to execute a dance that would baffle the best orchestra. I jigged and clogged around for fifteen or twenty minutes, and feeling I was alive again sought my blankets once more, but the cold was too intense and I could only say a few prayers and make a peaceful application of the meditation 'de propriis peccatis.'
"Another time, after fruitlessly scanning the horizon for a sign of a village, we found ourselves compelled to pass the night in the open air. This time I constructed a scientific Pullman berth for myself. Selecting the leeward side of an ice block, I dug a trench in the snow, using the fire-pan as a shovel. I hewed out the pillow at the head and made the grave (indeed it looked like one) about two feet wide and two deep and my exact length. Stretching my cassock over it, with the snow shoes as a supporting rack, I crawled into it and passed a tolerably comfortable night, though I awoke dozens of times from the violent coughing that had stuck to me since my stay in Tumna. So it went on till April 8. We had been three weeks on the road. Never had the trip to Tumna lasted so long. This was due to the fact that the dogs were exhausted and we had to walk back for about 250 miles in the snow."
The missionaries of the old Society would recognize this light hearted modern American apostle as their brother.
Another example in a region which is the very opposite of Alaska will convince the skeptic that the modern Jesuit retains the old heroic spirit of the missions. This time we are in the deadly swamps and forests of British Honduras and the apostle there is Father William Stanton of the Missouri province. As a scholastic he was teaching the dark skinned boys of Belize and incidentally gathering numberless specimens of tropical flora and fauna for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. From there he went to the other end of the earth and was put at scientific work in the Observatory at Manila. He was the first American priest ordained in the Philippines, and his initial ministerial work was to attend to the American soldiers, who were dying by scores of cholera. After that we find him again in Honduras, no longer in college but in the bush with about 800 Maya Indians, whose language he did not know but soon learned. He was still a naturalist but first of all he was absorbed in the care of the lazy and degraded Indians. His hut was made of sticks plastered with mud and thatched with palm leaves and he was all alone.
"Roads! Roads!" he writes, "they are simply unspeakable. It's only a little over nine miles from Benque Viejo to Cayo but it took me five hours to do it on horseback. Rain and the darkness caught me. It was so dark I could not see my horse's head but my Angel Guardian brought me through all right.... The only beasts that bother me are the garrapatas (ticks). I have to spend from an hour and a half to two hours picking them out of my flesh and my whole body is thickly peppered with blotchy sores where they have left their mark. But one can't expect to have everything his own way in this life even in the paradise of Benque. By the way, before I forget, would you try to send me a wash basin or bowl of glazed metal. I have nothing but the huge tin dishpan of the kitchen to wash my face in. It's a little inconvenient to scour the grease out every time I want to wash and I don't want to fall into real Spanish costumbres." His table was a packing case, his chair a box of tinned goods, his bed four ropes and a mat woven of palm leaves. He had one cup, plate and saucer.
"I have forty stations to get around to, and I haven't a decent crucifix, or ciborium, and only one chalice. I am not squealing for my house but for the Lord's. My good little mud house is a palace, even if the pigs and goats of the village do break in now and then to make a meal off one's old boots or the scabbard of one's machete. My bush church is fine; same architecture as my house, only larger. In church, the men stand around the walls, while the women and children squat on the clay floor and the babies roll all over, garbed only in angelic innocence."
Of one of his journeys he writes: "I have just returned from a river trip, after being away from home thirty-one days moving about from place to place among my scattered people on the river banks and in the bush. My health was good until last week when I got a little stroke from the heat, followed by several days' fever which put me on my back for four days, but I am now myself again. Fortunately I had only three more days' journey, and with the help of my two faithful Indians I arrived safely at Benque." These "three days," though he does not say so, were days of torture, and his Indians wondered if they could get him back alive. "I am now back as far as Cayo, arriving at 1.30 this morning. Everything is flooded with mud and water. I must get a horse and get out to Benque today, as I hear Father Henneman is down with fever. I have ten miles more to make, and over a terrible road through the bush, with the horse up to his belly in mud and water most of the time; but with the Lord's help I hope to be safe at home before night. I have been away only a week, having made some hundred and sixty miles on horseback, the whole of it through a dense jungle. I had to cut my way through with my machete, for the rank vegetation and hanging lianas completely closed the narrow trail."
He had gone out to visit a village and crossed a ford on the way. The river was high and the current strong. His horse was swept off his feet and Father Stanton slipped out of his saddle and swam beside the animal. Some quarter of a mile below there was a dangerous fall in the river, but they managed to reach the bank a hundred feet above the fall. He caught hold of a branch, but it broke and he was swept down the stream. With a prayer to his Guardian Angel he struck out for the deepest water and went over the fall. Some Indians near the bank saw the bearded white man go over the roaring cataract and they thought he was a wizard, but he went safely through, and then with long powerful strokes (he was a marvellous swimmer) he made for the bank. Then waving his hand to the startled Indians, he cut his way with his machete through the bush to look for his horse. Another time we find him returning after what he calls a "stiff trip," soaking wet all the time, for he had to swim across a swift river with boots and clothes on, he was all day in the saddle, was caught one night in the jungle in a swamp, pitch dark, knee deep in the mud — "Clouds of mosquitos and swarms of fiery ants had taken their fill of me," he writes, "while the blood sucking vampire bats lapped my poor horse. We got out all right and I had the consolation of being told by an Indian that three big tigers (jaguars) had been killed near the place last month."
On April 13, 1909, he says: "Just at present I am flat on my back with an attack of something, apparently acute articular rheumatism." He felt it, the first time while he was working in the garden. "I simply squirmed on the ground and screeched like a wild Indian." And yet he starts off to Belize on horseback to see the doctor, which meant a distant journey of four days, and he had to sleep in the bush one night. From Belize he returned by water in a "pitpan," a freight boat for shallow rivers that can easily upset in the slightest current. That meant eight weary days without room even to stretch himself out at night; with no awning in the day to shield him from the sun and frequently drenched by torrential rains. In September he is following his horse through the mud of the jungle. In October he was sent for again by the doctor at Belize, and returns a second time to his mission which meant eight days in the forest alone.
Finally, Father Stanton was ordered home to St. Louis, and it was found that his whole body was ringed around with a monstrous growth of cancer. He died in intense agony, but never spoke of his sufferings. In his delirium he was talking about Honduras. Only once he said "I am so long a-dying." He finally expired on March 10, 1910. He had just completed his fortieth year, but his missionary work was equal to anything in the old Society.